Internet is the most outstanding innovation in the field of communication in the history of mankind. The Internet is a global meeting place where people from all parts of the world come together. The Internet is named after the Internet Protocol, the standard communication protocol is used by every computer on the Internet. The Internet can powerfully leverage the ability to find, manage, and share information. It has proved to be a valuable resource been available to people at a minimal cost. The Internet is a technology that has migrated across business boundaries into many areas of modern life and has become a necessary information technology for businesses and other organizations to contact and interact with potential and existing consumers.
(http://www.livinginternet.com/i/i.htm , accessed 8 December 2008), (Baker Thomas 1999)
Internet began as a network for the U.S. Defence Department in the early 1970s, and was called the DARPAnet. The purpose for developing the Internet network was to do research and to build networks that could withstand a variety of natural disasters such as earthquakes and lightning strikes, and wars. Thus evolved from research the Internet communication network is now used primarily by non-military individuals. In 1986, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) initiated the development of the NSFNET which today provides a major backbone communication service for the Internet. During the time of its evolution after 1989, the Internet system began to integrate support for other protocol suites into its networking system. The present focus of the system is on multiprotocol interworking, and in particular, with the integration of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) protocols into the architecture. A great deal of support for the Internet community has come from the U.S. Federal Government. Since the Internet was originally part of a federally-funded research program and has now consequently become a major part of the U.S. research infrastructure.
During the late 1980's, the population of Internet users and network constituents expanded internationally and began to include commercial facilities. The Internet system today is made up of private networking facilities in educational and research institutions, businesses and in government organizations across the globe. Over its fifteen year history, the Internet has functioned as collaboration among cooperating parties. The Internet Activities Board (IAB) created in 1983 was to guide the evolution of the TCP/IP Protocol Suite and to provide research advice to the Internet community which has two primary components: The Internet Engineering Task Force and The Internet Research Task Force. The Internet Research Task Force continues to organize and explore advanced concepts in networking under the guidance of the Internet. (Misic MM, Hill JA 1994)
Today internet is measured by the capacity of its cables to carry information bits to the users. The carrying capacity is called bandwidth. Each of the line support hundreds or thousands of simultaneous users (Baker Thomas 1999).The Internet working includes a technical design and a management structure. The management structure consists of a generally democratic collection of organizations and working groups. Whereas the technical design is founded on a complex, interlocking set of hierarchical tree like structures like Internet Protocol addresses and domain names. These entities are mixed with networked structures like packet switching and routing protocols which are all tied together with millions of lines of sophisticated software that are kept updated with the new version.
(http://www.livinginternet.com/i/i.htm , accessed 8 December 2008)
(Pakhree, Jayashree 2007), (Ann D Rensel, June M Abbas, H Raghav Rao2006),
(http://www.pondered.org/the_internet.html accessed 9 December 2008)
While the World Wide Web received most of the publicity, another part of Internet also drew considerable attention. IRC, more formally referred to as Internet Relay Chat, provides a means by which one user can type a message in real time to one or more Internet users instantly. IRC is more immediate than e-mail exchanges because there is no need to wait a long time to receive a response. IRC also personalizes the Internet, which can sometimes seem cold and robotic. There are a lot of instant messenger applications. MSN and YAHOO are among the most popular ones available which help people to stay in contact with family, friends and loved ones globally. Messengers provide a medium to meet new people online, share experiences and also explore cultures of different ethnicity. The Internet offers yet another opportunity for developing a social network with people who share something in common .Social networking on the Internet took off in popularity several years ago. And now there are over 200 sites where people make new friends, find a date, exchange photos or make new business connections. Examples of other popular sites on the Internet include MySpace, Orkut, Friendster, Face Book and Linkedin. Many of these social networking sites allow people to add pictures and personal information. To attract new friends, it's very important that people remember to stay safe on the Internet Gaming and social networking sites. (Simpson, Carol 2000)
The Internet is also a powerful resource which is emerging as an important tool for business. A new inter-relationship among businesses has been created due to IT and the Internet that have expanded the scope of industrial competency to achieve competitive advantage .The Internet reduces the costs of obtaining, processing, and transmitting information, reduces the cost of marketing, advertising, and business operations, therefore improving the way firms do business . Firms with an aggressive and forward-looking technology strategy are turning innovative and creating new wealth because they are concentrating on improving existing practices through the adoption of computer-based information technologies. In medical field the physicians have adopted the strategy to integrate IT into the management processes of the medical practice. And thus improving the efficiency and effectiveness of information access, maintenance, and delivery. Some of the uses include automated patient scheduling, accounts receivable management, medical records management, and the use of electronic data interchange to electronically transmit medical information between doctors, hospitals and insurance companies. (Lauren B Eder, Marvin E Darter 1998), (Thompson SH Teo, Yujun Pian 2003)
Internet has a few disadvantages as well. Privacy of people is not secure on the Internet because personal information put up on the internet can be accessed by other people. For instance there are lot of cases where credit card details of people are stolen by fraudulent sites. Another problem prevailing online, which is most often employed by cyber thieves to steal a person’s personal details by the use of deceptive phishing attacks. Online phishing attacks for confidential personal information are launched in numerous ways among which most notably by means of deceptive e-mail messages. The phishing e-mail messages, which appear to come from legitimate sources, are carefully designed to trick the recipients into intentionally performing a series of actions that will provide access to their sensitive personal information. Spamming is another method where unwanted sites keep sending unsolicited emails in bulk, which serve no purpose and uses space of computer. Some of the online games on the internet involve violence and usage of abusive language which are played by teenagers and really have a bad effect on them. One of the major drawbacks of the Internet is the pornographic sites. There are lot of these sites online which may end up disturbing the lives of kids. There are also exists the danger of paedophiles who try to be friends with young kids online on social networking sites. (Butler R 2007)
Like any other public place, people need to be protective of their personal information when they are visiting sites on the Internet, and there are some bits of personal data that that should not share or have easily accessible on a social website. Younger generation should be educated about harmful things on internet, where parents can play a major role by blocking access to these websites and also increasing the firewall settings. Online games that have violence should be banned by the government or try to have an age restriction on them. The problems of spamming, virus threat and personal information theft can be solved by using spyware and antivirus softwares. Online consumers should familiarise themselves in a way in which legitimate organisations normally communicate with the clients.
Future of internet can be imagined saying that people would be working from home and no one would need to go to an office and that includes schooling for children as well. Teaching would be in form of virtual type. The broadband speed would be 100 times faster than now. (Pew Internet & American Life Project 2005)
Internet as a new communications system and advancement in digital technology has changed people lives in good way. It has improved the standard of life of people and brought world together. In business the Internet has made an integral part of an organization's technology. The more likely the resources the Internet has to offer, the more productive the workers would be. The illegal activities happening on the Internet that are frustrating for all Internet users, should not be ignored, but an effort should be made to try and stop these activities so that using the Internet can become a much safer place. Though, internet has created havoc, destruction, the advantages of it outweigh its disadvantages, and millions of people each day benefit from using the Internet for work and pleasure.
(Misic MM, Hill JA 1994)
REFERENCES:
Ann D Rensel, June M Abbas, H Raghav Rao (2006) “Journal of the Association for Information Systems” Atlanta 7(1): 19, 30
Baker, Thomas (1999) “Evolution of the Internet”
http://www.tiac.or.th/tiacweb/Baker/Section1_2.html (accessed 12 December 2008)
Butler R (2007) “The Electronic Library” Oxford 25(5): 517
David J. Henry (1998) “An Introduction to the Internet” http://www.oit.umd.edu/eis/staff/dhenry/inetintro/conclude.html
(accessed 13 December 2008)
“How the Internet works” http://www.livinginternet.com/i/i.htm (accessed 8 December 2008)
Internet Society (2008) “A Brief History of the Internet and Related Networks”
http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/cerf.shtml (accessed 14 December 2008)
Lauren B Eder, Marvin E Darter (1998) “Association for Computing Machinery of the ACM” New York 41(3): 52, 3
Martin.J, Turkel.S (1999) “Introduction to the Internet” http://www.brynmawr.edu/Acads/GSSW/jam/switr/orientation99/sld003.htm
(accessed 8 December 2008)
Misic MM, Hill JA (1994) “Journal of Systems Management” Cleveland 45(11): 5-6
Pakhree, Jayashree (2007) “Advantages and Disadvantages of the Internet” http://www.buzzle.com/articles/advantages-disadvantages-internet.html
(accessed 9 December 2008)
Pew Internet & American Life Project (2005) “The Future of the Internet”
http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/pip_future_of_internet.pdf (accessed 14 December 2008)
Simpson, Carol (2000) “Internet Relay Chat. Eric Digest.” http://www.ericdigests.org/1999-3/chat.htm (accessed 10 December 2008)
“The Advantages and Disadvantages of The Internet” http://www.pondered.org/the_internet.html (accessed 9 December 2008)
Thompson SH Teo, Yujun Pian (2003) “European Journal of Information Systems” Basingstoke 12(2): 78
No comments:
Post a Comment